Nora (19 page)

A pretty young woman with golden hair and big brown eyes looked at him through the screen door when he came up onto the porch. She stepped outside, and that was when he saw the bundle she was carrying. He stopped dead, his lean, dark face briefly tormented as he realized that she had a baby in her arms.

Amelia Howard Culhane stared at the lithe, silver-eyed stranger curiously. Her father-in-law, Brant, mother-in-law, Enid, and brother-in-law Alan all had dark eyes and hair. But King's eyes were silvery gray, several shades lighter than this man's. And he had the same lithe, rodeo cowboy physique, with long legs and wide shoulders and narrow hips. He even had the faint arrogance she associated with her husband.

“Why, you must be Callaway!” she said suddenly as she remembered the description of him she had heard early in her marriage. “I'm Amelia, King's wife. And
this is our son, Russell,” she said proudly, smiling at the tiny thing in the blanket. “Do come in.”

He took off his hat, belatedly, and ran a hand through his thick, dark hair as he followed her into the house. His bag was still in the carriage he'd hired. He'd turned that over to the stableboy, with instructions to bring the bag up to the house and leave it on the porch for him. It felt strange to be at home again after such a long absence.

“Enid!” Amelia called. “Look who's come to see you!”

A small, dark-eyed woman came out of the kitchen and stopped in her tracks as she saw the newcomer.

“Oh, my dear,” she said softly, and opened her arms.

Cal lifted her bodily off the floor and hugged her warmly. His little mother. He'd missed his family so much. And now he needed them more than ever before.

“It's good to be home,” he said, putting her down with a wan smile.

“You've been away for years, it seems,” she chided, “and hardly ever a letter! Can you stay until after the New Year?”

He shrugged. “I might as well,” he said. “We're waiting for a major part on the drill, and we can't get one until the first of the year.”

“Why not use a part off another one?” she suggested sagely.

“Because this is a new type of drill. The old ones
won't fit it, more's the pity. My partner is staying there to protect our interests until we can start again. Hopefully it will only be a delay of two or three weeks. I must learn to be patient.”

“Brant and Alan and King will be glad to see you,” she said. “They could never understand why you wouldn't settle here and be part of the ranch business.”

He grinned. “Latigo is King's. We all know that.” He glanced at the woman standing beside his mother and frowned slightly. “King, married and a father,” he said, shaking his head. “I couldn't believe it when Alan told me he'd married.”

“Neither could I,” Amelia offered, tongue in cheek. “We had a very rough beginning. But Russell has been our greatest joy. He is only two weeks old,” she added.

Cal didn't touch the child. He tried to, but his face was rigid and he forced a smile. “I'm no good with children.” He shrugged. “But he's sweet.”

“He's the image of his father,” Amelia said dreamily.

“King was never a baby,” Cal corrected. “He was born throwing orders around and breaking horses.”

“So I've heard,” Amelia replied with twinkling eyes.

“Come and have some cake with us,” Enid invited, pushing back her sweaty, gray-streaked hair. “I've just been cleaning the stove.”

A reminder that she did her own housework, and
it hurt. It brought back thoughts of Nora that were painful.

They talked a little until the coffee boiled and the cake was sliced onto a china plate. Then the baby cried, and Amelia announced that he needed changing and went down the hall with him.

Enid sat down with her son and the tray of coffee and cake that he'd carried into the parlor for her.

“Now,” she said to Cal. “Tell me why you've come home, in mourning and wearing a wedding band.”

He caught his breath audibly. He'd forgotten the band, which was one of a set he'd purchased in St. Louis when the train stopped there, figuring that a ring would make Nora less conscious of her condition.

He looked at the ring long and hard.

“You've married,” Enid prompted.

He looked down, shamefaced. “Yes.” He couldn't bring himself to tell her the whole sad tale. “She…lost our baby this week.”

“And you left her alone?”

“She didn't want me with her,” he said. “It has been difficult. She's an eastern woman, a socialite. She never wanted to marry me in the first place, but I…compromised her. I took her back to the ranch where I was working as foreman and installed her in the cabin. She had never cooked or cleaned.”

Enid was getting a sad picture. “And…?”

“The lifting was too much for her,” he said coldly, not sparing himself. “Beyond that, she contracted a
fever in Africa. It recurs. She became very ill and lost the baby.”

“There is so much more,” Enid said solemnly. “Isn't there?”

He smiled wanly. “I discovered too late that I love her.”

“And she?”

“Oh, she hates me,” he said pleasantly. “I cannot blame her. I dragged her into a life of drudgery to teach her humility. But it was I who learned the lesson.”

“A socialite living in a foreman's cabin,” Enid said heavily. “How could you not bring her here, properly, to your home?”

“I could not because she thinks she's married to a ranch foreman named Callaway Barton,” he said with a mocking smile. “Because of the combine business, I couldn't tell her uncle who I was, much less could I tell her. She thought me a poor, dirty cowboy and bemoaned the fate that shackled her to me.”

“Oh, Cal,” his mother said, shaking her head. “You have made a mess of it.”

“Indeed I have. She would not even speak to me. I had too much to drink and went to Beaumont. From there, I had nowhere else to go. Except here.”

“Is there no chance for the two of you?” Enid asked.

His broad shoulders rose and fell. “She will have gone back to her parents in Virginia by now. Her father is the most appalling snob, and her mother does what
she is told.” He looked up with twinkling eyes. “Unlike the women in this family.”

“Oh, I never did what your father told me to,” Enid agreed. “Eventually he realized it and stopped trying to boss me. Amelia is just the same,” she added with glee. “It's a treat to watch King try to get his way with her.”

“She seems very gentle,” he began.

“Looks,” Enid said, “can be deceptive.”

The sound of horses outside brought them both to the front porch, where a tall, lithe man with dark hair and silver-gray eyes dismounted beside a slighter, older one.

“King! Father!” Cal greeted, going forward to hug them.

King's eyes, so pale a gray that they seemed almost transparent, smiled into his brother's. “I'm glad you came home at last,” he said. “How goes the oil business?”

“Slowly,” Cal replied.

“Good. You can stay for Christmas.” Brant Culhane chuckled, daring his son to refuse.

“I might as well,” Cal said. “I have very little else to do. I've quit the Tremayne ranch.”

“You accomplished the changes, then?” Brant asked solemnly.

“As many as possible. Now it's a matter of time. Chester seems to be on the right track. At least I think he is. It was a good idea, to let me go as a foreman and ease him into the changes, rather than send orders to
that effect,” Cal replied. “It also gave me the opportunity to be a short distance from Beaumont and the drilling rig. Pike can handle things until I return.”

“Is he trustworthy?” King asked as they went into the house.

“That I don't know,” Cal murmured. “There's something about him that makes my neck hair bristle. I'll watch him. But his character hardly matters if we're sitting on another dry hole.”

“There you are!” Amelia laughed, coming forward with the baby to greet King.

The change in the older man was astonishing. The hard, ruthless look fell away from him. He smiled at Amelia, and there was such a radiance about him that Cal was shocked. In all their lives together, he'd never seen that sort of expression on his older brother's face.

“Hello, imp,” King murmured, and bent to kiss Amelia with tender affection. His lean hand touched the tiny head in her arms. “How's my Rusty?”

“Don't call him that!” Amelia groaned.

“He's my son, I can call him Rusty if I like,” he reminded her teasingly. “Besides, he's going to have red highlights in his hair, if it isn't red altogether. Your mother was a redhead, you once told me.”

“Yes, she was,” Amelia had to confess. She adored King with her eyes. “You look tired, my darling.”

He smoothed back her hair. “So do you, little one,” he said deeply. “You had no sleep last night at all. He was fussy.”

“And you sat up with me,” she reminded him warmly. “But I didn't have to go out and work all day. You did.” She caught his hand with her free one. “Come along and I'll pour coffee and cake into you. It will refresh you no end. Enid's made a lemon cake…!”

“They go on like that all the time,” Brant chuckled, watching them walk away. He shook his head. “Never saw anything like it.”

Neither had Cal. He felt more empty than he ever had, because now he could see what it would have been like if he and Nora had been close, if they'd had their baby and were married because they loved each other. He loved her, but she'd never loved him. If she had, his supposed profession as a working man would not have mattered to her. It hurt him to know that.

Brant talked about the ranch as they joined the others.

“Alan went back to see that girl outside Baton Rouge,” he said amusedly. “Looks like it may be serious this time.”

“Yes, and he's talking about a career in banking, in Baton Rouge. I don't think he's going to settle here,” Enid said over her shoulder as she poured coffee into more cups.

“I never thought he would,” Cal remarked. He sat down again and sipped the rich black liquid. He glanced at his brother with warm eyes. “We've all known forever that Latigo would only belong to King. His heart lives here.”

“In more ways than one,” King replied quietly, with possessive eyes on his wife and child as he lifted his cup to his lips.

Enid picked up her own cup. “Cal is married.”

“King!” Amelia exclaimed, grabbing at a napkin to mop up the scalding coffee that had landed on his jeans.

King was staring at his brother, oblivious to the coffee. “What the hell did you say!” he burst out. “Married, and you never brought your wife to us?”

Cal glowered in his mother's direction. “I couldn't bring her here,” he said before the question had completely escaped King's tight lips. “I was playing at being a ranch foreman, and she took it for the real thing. She's a rich easterner who had a problem with her attitude toward lesser beings.” He shifted uncomfortably and averted his eyes.

“He was teaching her a lesson by letting her live as a ranch foreman's wife,” Enid continued. “She taught him one instead and went home. He got drunk.”

“Thank you, Mother,” Cal muttered.

“You're welcome, my dear,” she said sweetly.

King knew there was more than that, but Cal looked shattered enough. “Regardless of the circumstances, it's nice to have you home,” he said firmly.

Enid knew she was being censured, without a word being spoken by her taciturn son. She grinned at him. “No need, King, dear, I'm finished.”

He chuckled. “Harridan,” he accused.

She nodded. “Living with your father caused it.”

“That's right,” Brant sighed, “blame it on me.”

Cal felt secure again, welcome and safe. He sat back in his chair with a quiet sigh. But the smile on his face wasn't a real one.

B
Y THE TIME
C
HRISTMAS
D
AY
came around, on a Tues day this year, there was a big change at the Tremayne ranch house. Nora had forsaken her stylish eastern dresses for plainer clothing, and she was doing most of the cooking and all the housework. Not that Helen and Melly and Chester treated her like a domestic; she was still one of the family and joined them at the table and in the parlor. But in all other respects, she lived befitting her new status in life.

She had become adept at ironing. Her hands were equally nimble at milking cows and churning the milk to butter. She could kill a chicken, and clean it—that had been a shattering experience, but with Helen's guidance, she conquered her squeamishness and did what she had to. She no longer had qualms about get ting dirty, something she had once had a horror of. She
helped plan a spring wedding for Jacob and Melly, and she was slowly learning how to sew.

Acquiring these skills had worked another change in her. She was less nervous and high-strung. She felt different, free of the shackles of her parents' attitudes and rigid social class mentality. Helen had changed her attitude as well. She felt bad about her previous prejudice against Jacob Langhorn, and he and his son were now welcome at the ranch.

Melly was giving Nora riding lessons. She still wasn't good at it, but she could stay on the animal's back. Often she thought of Cal and wondered where he was, how he was. He had not tried to contact her after she had sent him away. Of course, she had told him she was going back to Virginia so he would not know she was still with her aunt and uncle. She worried about where he was, and how he was making his living.

She felt some guilt over costing him a job he had enjoyed. She wondered if he blamed her because she hadn't told him the truth about her condition. Melly had remarked that Cal was shattered when her mother gave him her cold message. Her only thought had been for her own pain. She was sorry now that she'd refused to see him. As Melly had said, it was Cal's baby, too. He would have felt sad about that loss and probably guilty, coming home to find Nora in that terrible condition after their argument.

He was not a heartless man, as she knew so well. Possibly he had not meant many of the things he said.
Her aunt had caught him on the raw with her comments about Nora's lack of help and with her well-meant interference in cabling Nora's parents. But Nora missed her husband more than she thought she ever might. Her life had never been so empty. All the wealth and status in the world meant nothing now. If her parents had still wanted her, she doubted she would have gone back to them. In her heart she couldn't stop hoping that Cal might come back one day.

Finally driven to desperation by the lack of news, she asked her aunt about him. “Have you heard from Cal?” Nora wondered as they laid out Christmas dinner.

The apparent nonchalance of that question didn't fool Helen. “Why, yes,” she said.

Nora's hands shook. She put the plates down carefully. “How is he?”

“He's with his family,” Helen told her quietly, pausing to set the dressing in its pretty china bowl on the table. “He said that he hoped you had recovered and that you were regaining your strength.”

Nora's eyes brightened. For the first time since her ordeal, she looked alive. “Did he?”

“My dear,” Helen said gently. “Do you miss him so much?”

Nora bit her lip and averted her eyes. “I was not fair to him. He knew nothing of my condition, and I had been too proud to tell him. We had a vicious quarrel before he left. I remembered too well some of the cruel
things he said to me, and I refused to listen when he tried to speak to me. I was hurt.”

“Of course you were.”

She straightened the tablecloth. “There's something you don't know,” she said. “The real reason we were married.”

“Because of the baby?”

Nora's eyes came up, startled but resigned, a second later. “Yes.”

“As I thought.”

“He didn't love me,” she said dully. “He told me so, before he left. He said that our marriage was a mistake. He was ashamed of me. So ashamed that he had not even told his family about me.” Her eyes closed as she remembered how he had said it, the coldness of his deep voice outlining her faults for her. “Perhaps he was right. I felt very superior to other people.” She smiled wanly as she looked up. “I have learned a painful lesson. Decency cannot be measured in dollars.”

Helen's eyes sparkled. “I had to learn the same lesson when I came here to live with Chester. I, too, came from the stock of European royalty, and I behaved as if I had. It's only recently that I've learned to accept people without looking first at their clothing and social status.”

“My father will always judge people that way,” Nora said sadly. “And my mother will never question anything he does. I miss my parents. But I miss Cal, oh, so much more.”

“It is sad that you could not write to him,” Helen
replied, trying not to remember her part in their problems. She had meant well, but her interference had been costly to her niece.

Nora looked at her, thinking. “But perhaps I could write to him….”

“I meant that his letter had no return address at all,” Helen replied with a sad smile. “And a postmark that was not even legible.”

“Oh.” Nora lifted a saucer and polished it with the clean cloth in her apron until it shone. Her heart felt heavy in her chest as she realized that she might never see Cal again. “Do you think he might write again?” she ventured.

“He did send the name of his attorney,” Helen said reluctantly. “You see…he thought you might need it—to divorce him.”

 

N
ORA DIDN'T EAT
. She couldn't manage a single bite of the delicious turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce, with all the trimmings. She tried to smile and pretended to be gay, so that she wouldn't upset the huge family gathering that even included Jacob and Bruce Langhorn. But her heart wasn't in a festive mood. It was worse than she'd ever thought it could get. Cal wanted to get rid of her. He wanted her to divorce him. He had meant it when he said their marriage was a mistake. He had never loved her, and now there was no chance that he ever would.

She listened absently to the discussion of news after they ate, saddened by the reports out of Galveston that
typhoid and malarial fevers were rampant there. The city still had not recovered from the devastating flood in September.

A more humorous note was struck by a news item out of Montana, about a dozen cowboys allegedly being chased for twenty miles by two outlaws. The incident was reported tongue in cheek, and the writer bewailed the passing of the brave “knights of the plain” of days past.

Chester had read the item to them out of an El Paso newspaper that had come for Cal Barton, who was no longer in residence.

“Interesting, this,” he mused, having turned to the personal notes page. “The paper notes that all three sons of the Culhane family are together with their parents at Christmas for the first time in several years.” He looked up. “That's the old West Texas ranching family I mentioned to you, the one that heads the combine that owns this ranch. The eldest son, King, and his wife had a boy of their own just recently.”

“Why did Cal subscribe to an El Paso paper?” Nora asked with idle curiosity.

“Well, he and I did want to keep tabs on the Culhanes, if you must know,” Chester said sheepishly. “It never hurts to know what they're up to, and whatever they do makes news in El Paso.”

“There has been no further contact from them,” Helen ventured. “They must be satisfied with the changes Mr. Barton helped you make.”

“Apparently so,” Chester said, smiling, “which
makes this Christmas truly a blessed one for me.” He glanced at Helen. “You haven't given Eleanor her letter.”

Helen grimaced. “Chester…”

“Go on,” he instructed firmly.

Nora's face brightened. Why, Cal had written to her! He must not have meant it after all, about the divorce.

Helen got up to produce a letter from a table in the parlor and came back with it, but she was slow in handing it to her niece.

Nora's face was full of hope until she saw the postmark. Her smile faded.

“Open it,” Chester advised gently.

Nora looked at him fearfully.

“I had your aunt write again and tell them of your terrible illness,” he said quietly. “They are not heartless, Nora.”

Nora hesitated only for a moment before she opened the envelope. It was a Christmas card, gaily decorated, very expensive. She opened it and recognized her mother's handwriting immediately.

“We are sorry to hear that you have been so ill,” her mother wrote. “If you would like to come home, your father is willing to accept your apology. Do write him, dear. Love from Mother and Father.”

Nora breathed normally for a moment. Then she slowly got up and walked to the stove in the kitchen, opened the eye and tossed the card in. She slammed the cover back on and put the lifter back on its peg.

“I…see,” Chester murmured.

Nora rejoined the others, sitting down very primly in her chair. “My father wishes me to apologize,” she explained. “I didn't mention before that he slapped me when we told him we were going to be married. He took exception to my choice of husbands.”

Chester scowled. “My dear! I had no idea, or I would
never
have…!”

She held up her hand with a faint smile. “I have kept far too many secrets.”

“To slap a woman in your condition!” Chester was outraged. “And what did Cal do?”

“He knocked my father onto the floor and dared him to touch me again,” Nora recalled wistfully. “I was quite taken aback at first. So was my father.”

“Good for Cal,” Melly muttered, and her shocked mother nodded her own assent.

“My father had never been spoken to in such a way,” Nora continued. “I expect it still festers inside him that he was bested by a man of such low social status.” Nora's eyes twinkled. “If you could but have seen it! Cal was wearing a pistol at his side, and that fringed buckskin jacket with his boots and that tattered old black hat.” She laughed softly, her eyes bright with love as she remembered how Cal had looked that day, so handsome that her heart ached with the memory. “My mother asked if he was a desperado!”

They all laughed at that, and Nora began to relax and throw off the pain the card had brought.

“Surely you won't apologize, will you?” Helen asked suddenly.

“Apologize! For what?” Nora asked. “For losing my child, and my husband, and almost my life?” She shook her head. “My father cannot change, but I have. I do not wish to apologize, nor do I wish to go back to Virginia. Why, I have a job, after all!”

They laughed even louder at the smug, mischievous look on her face. She didn't add that she had one other reason for not wanting to go back East. If Cal Barton ever came back this way, she was going to still be here, waiting for him. He was going to be a trial to her all her life if he did, but she loved him with all her heart, and it didn't matter if his boots were filthy and he had to work cattle forever. She only wished that he would come back, so that she could tell him so.

 

C
AL MOONED AROUND AT
L
ATIGO
for two more days, wishing that he could have put a return address on the letter he wrote to the Tremaynes. His family attorney, old Walpole, hadn't heard a word from Nora or her parents. That might be good or bad. She could be ill again. The fever had a tendency to recur, the doctor said. It worried him that she might be sick even now, and he wouldn't know.

“It's time I left,” he told his family at the midday meal the next day. There had been a quiet celebration, in which he hardly figured. He felt like an outsider, with his heart back in Tyler Junction.

“Back to the oil fields, I guess?” Alan asked with a
grin. He'd come home from Baton Rouge very secretive and poised to return. “I'll go along with you and catch a train from Beaumont on to Baton Rouge.”

“She must be some lady,” King mused.

“She is,” Alan said. “I'll bring her home with me in the spring.”

That took everyone's mind off Cal's announcement and spared him the inevitable questions. But they came anyway, from King, later.

The older man propped his boot on the lower rung of the corral while they watched the wrangler break a new horse. He smoked his cigarette quietly for a minute before he spoke.

“You've hurt her, haven't you?” King asked.

Cal glanced at him, not surprised by his perception. He and King were much alike, not only in build, but in temperament. It had led to some terrible fistfights in their youth, but now created a special bond between them.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I said some unforgivable things.”

“And you're afraid to go back, because she might not want you.”

Cal chuckled without humor. “I suppose I am.”

King flicked an ash from his cigarette. “I know more than I'll ever tell you about being in the wrong with a woman. I've played hell myself and, fortunately, been forgiven. I almost lost Amelia. It changed me.”

Cal rolled himself a cigarette while he chose his words. “This has changed me,” he said finally when
he'd finished and lit it. “I never thought I wanted marriage or children before. But I'd give anything to have a second chance.”

“Go to her,” King advised quietly. “Find out how she feels.”

Cal smiled ruefully at his brother. “Her father will probably meet me at the door with the local constable. I hit him pretty hard.”

“This time,” King said, “dress like a gentleman. And act like one!”

“I thought that clothes and background wouldn't matter, if she loved me.”

King scowled as he remembered the way it had been with Amelia, before they married. She had clung to him, adored him. It wouldn't have mattered to her if he'd been a sheepherder, she loved him so much. She still did.